Calorie

The calorie was first defined by Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of heat, and entered French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867. The word comes from Latin calor meaning "heat".

Medieval peasants ate twice as many calories as we do today.

Values are measured experimentally with a bomb calorimeter.

In more primitive times most individuals burned up the calories gained from the food they consumed through the rigors of their daily activities. This is no longer true for most people, particularly those living in industrialized nations.

Americans consume 3,800 calories on average daily. The recommended daily intake is 2,000 calories.

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound.

Walking briskly for one mile in 15 minutes burns approximately the same amount of calories as does jogging an equal distance in 8.5 minutes.

Over 90% of the calories you burn are used to maintain your body temperature. A good way to lose weight is, therefore, to expose your body to the cold.

At its height, Elvis Presley's daily food intake was an estimated 94,000 calories, nearly twice that of an Asian elephant.

Eating breakfast will help you burn from 5-20% more calories throughout the day.

According to Yahoo! Shine, the average American eats between 3,000 to 5,000 calories at their Thanksgiving dinner. It turns out the item that does the most damage to your waistline is pecan pie. Each piece is said to be worth 503 calories.

Over 20% of all calories collectively consumed by humanity are from a single food: rice.

There are about 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat, so you would have to burn about 500 per gym session for a week to lose it.

Whale blubber contains more calories per pound than any other food found in nature.

Standing burns about 50 more calories an hour than sitting.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

Doing mental exercises, such as crosswords, sudokus and puzzles, is claimed to burn as many as 90 calories per hour.

Each time you laugh you burn up, on average, 3.5 calories.

Running a mile only burns 105 net calories.

You burn about 0.17 calories for every step you climb, so you burn roughly a calorie and a half for every 10 upward steps.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Every time you lick a USPS stamp, you ingest about 10% of a calorie. British stamps, on the other hand, contain about 5.9 calories

It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Ice-cold water is the only negative calorie beverage, since your body needs to spend energy to heat it up. Drinking one such glass a day, it would take a person over a year to lose a single pound of weight.

Two handfuls of walnuts contain 650 calories

A whole melon contains around 600 calories, 100 more than a Big Mac.

There’s a one-calorie difference between a bowl of Frosties and a bowl of Special K. (The extra calorie is in Special K).

According to a Chinese newspaper article, kissing burns off three calories per smooch.